Program

Radically Rural 2019 offers six engaging program tracks including Arts & Culture, Entrepreneurship, Journalism, Main Street, Renewable Energy, and Working Lands. Click on each track to learn more about the four exclusive sessions each track offers!

Arts and culture bring creativity, energy and civic engagement to rural communities. But they are robust economic engines, too, and often ignored for that potential. How do artists and arts-based organizations not only survive, but thrive as sustainable businesses in rural communities? How do they give back to their towns? Explore how artists can develop their business models, their markets and, in turn, become advocates and catalysts for their rural communities.

Entrepreneurship has a powerful impact on creating regional prosperity through job creation and building local companies, which care deeply about their communities. But we see growing disparity between rural and urban entrepreneurial activity and a corresponding socio-economic and political gap between the two. Distinct solutions are needed for there to be a rural advantage. Innovative small town ecosystems are bubbling up across the nation. Join us to learn about the creativity and change that is driving local economies AND building small communities, which thrive.

Small town journalism is at risk. Consolidation of media companies, the closing of newspapers and reduction in journalism jobs have conspired in some cases to create news deserts. What happens to small communities when the news they have relied upon for decades erodes or disappears? What can be done to preserve local journalism and news coverage? Did you know it’s more expensive to live in communities without journalism watchdogs? We have solutions.

It’s an idea as much as a location. Throughout rural America, nothing represents small businesses, friendly neighbors and unmatched customer service better than Main Street. Equal parts contemporary life and nostalgia, Main Street is a feeling of timelessness and of community. Main Streets are survivors – of malls, of flights to cities, and now online commerce. Can they continue to thrive? Yes. Think radically.

Certain to be more and more a part of the sustainable lifestyle many seek, renewable energy offers economic and household opportunities to small towns everywhere. Tax credits, net zero construction and solar power are all part of a new business and personal landscape taking hold in rural settings. What makes regions like yours most likely to adapt to and adopt this approach to energy use.

Land. It is the asset of rural life. It is what defines much of small town life and what so many of us seek to use, conserve or preserve. It is through which water flows, in which food grows and upon which we in rural communities uniquely rely. So what is being done to sustain it; to keep it robust and producing; to enrich it and keep it? If so much of our rural character is because of the land, what should we expect ahead?